Baptists
Baptists are Christians who comprise a group of denominations and churches that subscribe to a doctrine that baptism should be performed only for professing believers (believer's baptism, as opposed to infant baptism), and that it must be done by immersion (as opposed to affusion or sprinkling). Other tenets of Baptist churches include soul competency (liberty), salvation through faith alone, scripture alone as the rule of faith and practice, and the autonomy of the local congregation. Baptists recognize two ministerial offices, pastors and deacons. Baptist churches are widely considered to be Protestant churches, though some Baptists disavow this identity. Diverse from their beginning, those identifying as Baptists today differ widely from one another in what they believe, how they worship, and their attitudes toward other Christians. Baptists in 1632 When Grantville arrived in 1631, the Baptist movement was new,Historians trace the earliest church labeled "Baptist" back to 1609 in Amsterdam, with English Separatist John Smyth as its pastor. small, and largely unknown outside of England. Since one of its basic tenets is adult baptism, many down-time Germans tended to view it as a form of Anabaptism, which was widely seen as a dangerous heresy. Grantville had a Southern Baptist church, presided over by the Rev. Albert Green, who was its first pastor to have more than a bachelor's degree. The church had a reputation of being hard on pastors, largely due to the deacons led by Albert Underwood. Many did not want a pastor with Green's advanced degrees, but took him in 1997 because no one else would go. In turn, Green went because no other church was interested in taking him. Even before the Ring of Fire, there was tension between Green and Underwood, and it got worse afterward. Underwood was opposed to allowing German Anabaptists to hold German-language services, partly because of his belief that the language of the church should be English, but mostly because many of them did not strictly adhere to his strict interpretation of Baptist doctrine. In 1634, Joe Jenkins and about a third of the church's German members left to start their own church. In the middle of 1635, matters came to a head over alcohol. Underwood held to a strict belief that drinking, even if it was just beer or wine with meals, was sinful, and intended to enforce total abstention from alcohol as church policy. Green knew that the widespread objection of up-time American Baptists to drinking was cultural, that German culture had a totally different outlook on it, and that requiring total abstention as a condition of membership would cut the church off from any outreach to down-timers. In August of 1635, the deacons, led by Underwood, presented Green with an ultimatum; either preach that drinking, in and of itself, was a sin or resign. Green stated that he could preach against drunkenness, and even that the congregation required total abstention, but that drinking, in and of itself, was not sinful. This led to Green being barred from the church's pulpit, and ordered to leave the parsonage within thirty days. Around Christmas of 1635, during a conversation among Reva Pridmore, Vanna Rush, Inge Styggsen, and Dorothea Ficke, it was mentioned that Reva and Vanna were Baptists. Notes The dispute between Green and Underwood is detailed in Grantville Gazette XXX, "A Tale of Two Alberts". The story does not say exactly when Green left the church. However, the Grid places it in 1636, and lists a few dozen up-time members as having left with him. References Category:Religion